


i am not there (i do not sleep)

by DuskDragon39, GirlwithSwordandBow



Series: ((i do not sleep)) [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angry death goddesses, Angst, Chess games with Death, F/M, Identity Issues, Look Barry's just not having a fun time here, Memory Loss, Muder, Pod-Together 2019, Podfic & Podficced Works, Really incompetent necromancers, Temporary Character Death, Threatened Character Death, and some not-so ominous ones, brief mention of suicidal ideation, repeated character death, some ominous ocs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-07-19 10:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19972285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuskDragon39/pseuds/DuskDragon39, https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlwithSwordandBow/pseuds/GirlwithSwordandBow
Summary: You died when you fell.You tumbled through the air, a smoking crater in your chest, and hit the ground hard enough to snap your neck.You fell, and you died, and for ten long years after that you just kept on dying, over and over and over.(Or: a series of vignettes as Barry searches for Lup, annoys the Grim Reaper, and tries his best not to go insane.)





	1. In Which You Forget

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy fic. It is hopefully a slightly hopeful fic (with some funny bits thrown in), but it deals with Barry and those ten years that Griffin so helpfully summarized for us.  
> This is the slightly less summarized (and much less canonical) version.
> 
> (Title from "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep" by Mary Elizabeth Frye)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You fall.

  


_Writing and cover art by[DuskDragon39](https://duskdragon39.tumblr.com/tagged/duskarts)_  
_Podfic by[GirlWithSwordandBow](http://girlwithsword.tumblr.com) _

Your compass snakes out across the map, slashing a dark black circle across the landscape. The bright white x at its epicenter seems to smirk at you. Another place, another failure. You’ve been searching around the Sword Mountains and Felicity Wilds for months now. The towns nearest to the last glassing have given you nothing- not Phandalin, not what’s left of Leilon, not even Neverwinter. You’ve begun branching out, searching dungeons and wilderness and ruins in hopes of finding some clue. 

You grimace at the map. The dungeon you’d been intending to investigate sits a little ways beyond the last glassing- a little ways beyond that dark circle, edging into the Felicity Wilds. The dark red circle around it stares up at you almost accusingly. Maybe this time it’ll be different, you think. Maybe this time you’ll find her. 

The last time you saw Lup, she kissed you goodnight with a quiet “Love you, babe,” and then she was gone. She was gone, and you were alone, and you looked, and Taako looked, but all you had was a note and hope, and some days it doesn’t even feel like you have that anymore. 

There’ve been no glassings since she disappeared. There’ve been no messages, no mysterious disappearances, no lich sightings, nothing. It’s like Lup’s dropped off the face of this plane completely. She wouldn’t just leave you and Taako like that, though. Something had to have happened to her. If you could just find any sign that she was still here, at least- 

You’re pretty sure Taako’s been taking it even worse than you have, if that’s possible. He’s been casting spells constantly for months, trying to pick up on any sign of her magic. While you’ve been trying to ask around (unfortunately there’s… no real subtle way to ask someone if they’ve seen a lich in a red cloak floating around), Taako’s been exhausting himself magically, collapsing into a snoring pile given half a chance. 

You… 

You’re so tired. You just want this to be over. 

You just want to see Lup again. You want to hold her in your arms one last time, to hear her laugh at whatever purposefully idiotic thing Taako’s done this time, or even just know that she’s on the Starblaster somewhere. You want to know that she’s there. 

You can feel your eyes slowly drift close against the bright white of the map. Red dots and black lines swim in your vision, expanding and shifting as your own exhaustion begins to tug you under. 

“How’s it going?” Taako’s voice jolts you out of your sleep deprived stupor, and you turn to look at him. He’d walked over to your table at some point in the past few minutes. His hand rests gently, almost accusingly, on your shoulder. 

“Oh sorry, I- sorry,” you stammer out, and then turn to look at your map again. You’d marked your current goal in a dark red ink. You stare at it for a moment, and then pick up your train of thought again. “There’s a… there’s a dungeon out beyond the Felicity Wilds-” you point- “it’s a subterranean… demonic keep... thing. There’s a bunch of arcane energy coming off of it.” The red ink smudges slightly under your finger, staining it the same color as your robes. “I was gonna check it out tonight, if you wanna come with,” you say. It doesn’t feel like enough, somehow. Both you and Taako are scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of places to look, and you have a sneaking suspicion that this keep thing’s only going to disappoint you guys again. Maybe you’ll find her this time. More likely you won’t. 

That suspicion hovers somewhere deep inside your magic, a dark boiling cloud of misery and bad feelings. What if you don’t find her this time? What if you never find her again?

Taako’s leaning over your map now, asking how far the keep is in relation to the last glassing. You point to the black circles on the map. It’s surprisingly close to where you’d been searching. You maybe should have looked there before, considering the arcane energy coming off the place, but it’s not the type of place Lup would have gone without a reason or without someone else (Taako, probably, or Magnus) as backup. 

“Do you want to do the usual?” Taako asks. “I’ll go down and start casting around, see if I can pick up anything, and then- you start talking to folks?” His speech is slower, almost, and it sounds like he’s just as tired as you are. 

“Yep. That’s uh,” you pause for a moment. “I mean, it hasn’t worked so far, but… it’s gotta work one of these times.” That’s optimistic enough right? It doesn’t sound like you’re starting to doubt that you’ll find her or that she’s even near here. But the discontent brewing in your magic isn’t going away, and you still haven’t found any sign of her despite months of searching. You have to ask. “Taako, what if she’s just gone?” 

[The universe seems to hold its breath, and everything is suddenly, eerily, quiet.]

“... Who?” 

For a long, horrible, moment everything hangs in the air. And then you feel it too. Static is crawling across your mind, blotting out even the Starblaster and the quiet evening air. You can’t remember her- her- who were looking for? Red robes and violin music and laughter and her voice, her determination, kissing you goodnight and leaving- you whirl in your chair- what were you doing? Your fingers are stained red- and grab the elvan man standing behind you.

“Ta-Taako? Taako-” your lips say, and who is that? You know him, you know that you know him, but the static’s there, and it’s impossible to just think- 

“What if who’s gone?” asks the man- asks Taako- and his voice is cracking and static is filling the air around you two. 

“What are we…?” you ask. The static’s everywhere now, making it difficult to remember anything. Lup is- Lup- she was important, somehow, but you can’t remember. 

“Taako,” you say, trying desperately to hold onto his name, “I’m… I can’t remember her face, Taako.” 

He’s nearly yelling now, and he’s bent towards you, clutching you so hard that you’re sure you’ll have bruises later. “Whose face?!” 

You pull a solitary strand of thought out of the static. “Is this Fisher?” You hope not, but you can’t remember why you feel that way, can’t remember why it matters, can’t remember why there’s a twisting feeling curling in what might be your stomach- 

The man doesn’t respond, but his face is torn, and an almost silent scream is tearing its way out of his throat. You grasp at him again, knocking your chair over as you try to stand. The static is getting worse. You have to- you have to-

The two of you stagger back from the table, somehow ending up near the railing of the ship. The ship? You’ve never been on a ship, how can you be on a ship now? With the last threads of your magic (but how can you have magic?)- you grasp at the last threads of your magic and fight through the static clouding your head. 

“Taako-” you gasp out. “K-kill me! Right now! I’ll remember if I’m a lich, I can- please, Taako! Just kill me!” That doesn’t make any sense. Why are you- you’ll be okay, you know you’ll be okay- 

“I can’t forget!” You’re shouting it in his face now. “I’m begging you, please, Taako!” He pulls his wand out from his holster, and you’re shaking him by the shoulders now, the two of you pressed up the Starblaster’s railings. You choke out one last “please!” and then he raises the wand and there’s a blinding pain in your chest. You briefly feel the railing pressed up against your back and then you’re falling-

The last thing you see is the shaking face of a man you do not know as he leans over the railings of an airship, his wand still smoking.

* * *

The soft glow of sunset filters gently through the hood of your robe. The world is swathed in shades of orange and red, touched by the light filtering through the mountains. The ground is hard under your back, and you can almost feel the memory of pain slipping from your mind as you lay there, unmoving. In the distance, a family of halfling farmers chatter amongst themselves. A peal of laughter rings out. In the tree above you, a nightingale begins to sing. 

The sounds are muted to you, as though you’re under a mile of ocean. Your other senses are likewise dulled, made pale by non-existence. Stronger to you are the currents of magic that flow under and around your feet, born by the land and her inhabitants. They outline your surroundings, highlight the halflings undisturbed by your fall, and twine around your robes. Above you, a shadow sweeps across the sun as the Starblaster disappears into the distance. 

The Starblaster? Taako was there, you were going to check out that dungeon- Lup- the memories slam into you suddenly, each hitting like a hammer blow. You’d forgotten. How could you have forgotten? Taako’d been right there, and you’d somehow forgotten him, the static sweeping across your mind and blotting out any recognition. You’d forgotten Lup.

You pull yourself to what passes for your feet in your lich form, hovering above your twisted and smoking body. The wheat around it’s been crushed, and you feel a brief flicker of remorse before the full magnitude of what just happened slams into you with all the force of a speeding train.

The static’s gone, and with it your brother and any hope you might have had of finding Lup. They’re gone. Everyone’s gone, and if it was the voidfish’s fault, if someone had given your lives to it- then they’re not coming back, not unless you can find the voidfish. Not unless they die. 

What do you do now? Your family’s gone. You’re sure that Magnus, that Merle and Lucretia and Davenport- they’ll have forgotten too. 

They’re gone. 

They’re gone, they’re gone, and you’re alone- 

The discontent you’d felt roiling in your gut earlier is screaming now. There’s a black hole in your stomach, in your magic, in the place where Lup had been, in the place where your family had anchored you. It spins outwards, spreading through your chest and your skeletal hands, through what’s left of your face and the robe that spins around your feet. Red lightning begins to flicker around you, and you think you can hear screaming. 

After a moment you realize that it’s coming from you. 

Time slows around you. Each beat drags on for an interminable minute, freezing the world into intricate, bloody, detail. The nightingale’s wings lie fallow in the wind as it floats above your head. A small fox, wandering out of the wheat to sniff curiously at your dead body, stands paralyzed. You can see its eyes clouding over in fear, can see it gradually lift a paw and shift its weight, begin to turn tail and run. The hole inside you is opening wider, a yawning gap that stretches through you and pulls you down into its grasp. 

You’re falling- 

But you can’t. You can’t fall apart yet. Lup’s still out there. She has to be. She’s defined you and anchored you in so many ways, and if you’re still here then she has to be. If she’s dead then she’ll remember. If she’s alive then you can still find her.

You’ll find her. You’ll figure this out. Your family will figure this out. You just have to get them there- find the artifacts, take back the Starblasters, and inoculate them with the voidfish ichor. And the first step to getting there is finding Lup. 

You take a breath and pull yourself back together. You’ll need to find a way to get your body back and a way to support yourself while you’re searching. The Starblaster’s vanished somewhere, so that’s one option down. Maybe… 

A stream of bloody red power swirls in the palm of your hand, conjuring a small glass vial. You bend down to your body and slit open your wrist. Blood oozes out slowly, and you scrape some of it into the vial. You slip it into a fold of your cloak and then rise once more. 

You hang there for a moment, a red specter hovering over the body of a middle-aged scientist, and then you’re gone. Behind you, the halfling family continues packing up for the night. The fox scampers back into the long wheat, and the nightingale begins singing again. 

You have work you need to do. 

* * *

Three days after you fall, you find a small cave near Mnerim, a short ways from the last glassing. Leilon is still slowly being eaten by the forest, trees and grass taking over the buildings that aren’t black glass. There are too many monsters in the area now to justify settling there, but your new- home, you guess- is a few miles away, far enough that you don’t have to deal with the roaming bands of goblins but close enough to the glassing that you can continue your search. 

It’s small and the walls are cold, but you’ve dealt with worse. It’ll work. 

You’ll make it work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Meanwhile, on the waverider....](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647616/chapters/54129598)


	2. In Which You Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It smells like death.

You’re dicking around near Phandalin when you first feel it. A cold chill slips through your thick robes and twines itself around the empty hole in your magic. It feels like the winter where you and Lup almost died, like the tendril of the Hunger that killed you as you stood fighting it with Magnus, and like the icy cold of Taako’s spell as he blasted you off the bow of the Starblaster. You shiver uncontrollably. 

It feels like death. 

You float upwards from the ruined castle you were exploring and look around. There’s no sign of anyone. The goblins that had overrun this place had long since been driven off, and the townsfolk were still wary about the area. There shouldn’t have been anyone here, but you can still feel eyes on the back of your neck and the twisting cold that’s settled itself firmly in your gut. You… you don’t know what this is. You’d never felt anything like it in the worlds you’d visited. If anything it reminds you of a death goddess you’d run into a little while back- she’d let you and Lup go once she realized you hadn’t purposefully broken her rules, but her gaze on you had had a similar twisting cold. 

This, though…. This is a thousand times worse than that feeling. There's something watching you, and it isn't happy. 

You shoot upwards from your place amongst the ruins, desperately trying to get away from that stare. Everywhere you go, though, it’s still there, crawling down your back and twining around your bones. You want to scream. 

“Well, this’ll be easier than I thought.” A voice crawls into your mind through your fear, and your first thought is- that is the worst fantasy cockney accent you’ve ever heard. Ever. You whirl in midair. Behind you floats another lich- no, not another lich. The exposed bone and flowing black robe are familiar, but he’s wearing a dark, neatly pressed suit underneath that, and there’s a giant fucking scythe slung over his back.

Annnd now he’s swinging that giant fucking scythe directly. At. Your. Face. You scream and duck out the way, sinking a good two feet into the top of the ruined tower. The scythe sweeps over your head, and you swear you can hear it cleave through the wind.

Instantly, your attacker launches himself after you again, his weapon already swinging. You throw up a shield just in time to save yourself from getting decapitated. 

“Who-who are you?” you stammer out. The not-a-lich sighs and retreats for a minute, thankfully pulling that fucking scythe of his out of convient kill-Barry range.

“Kravitz. I suppose you’d call me a bounty hunter?” He flips the scythe easily around his arm, creating a spinning ball of death. You back up a little more. 

“Uh… For who?” He raises an eyebrow at you. 

“The Raven Queen? Goddess of Death? The one that upholds the natural laws of life and death?”

“.... You’re the Grim Reaper?”

“Sure, let’s go with that.” With that, he’s back to attacking you. The scythe, while seemingly an awkward weapon, sits easily in his hands. His strokes are smooth and precise, and you can almost hear Magnus’ voice commenting on his form. 

You, unable to keep throwing up more shields, pull on the dark well of power in your gut and thrust your hands out in front of you. Kravitz seems to hum something, and then a glimmering red and black shield rotates in front of him. 

Then greenish-yellow fog boils out of your hands, surrounding both you and Kravitz in a thick, choking smog. Vague, snarling curses make their way to your non-existent ears as you turn tail and begin running. Lup would kill you if you got yourself permanently killed now, and your pretty sure that that scythe could more than do the job. 

Behind you, Kravitz bursts out of the fog and starts gaining on you. You turn, concentrating on the mountainside beneath and behind him. With another burst of red sparks, your vantage point’s changed, and you’re staring at Kravitz from the ground as he hovers in midair. Before you can hide, he spins around and begins moving in your direction. You tense, getting ready to flee again.

Instead of coming for you, though, you see him dive towards the ruins. His body and cloak dissolve into a bright sphere of white light, and then rocks are piling up around him and you’re staring down a fifty foot stone and masonry golem. You shout again and take off flying.

Heavy, thudding, footsteps follow you as you try to fly faster and faster. The same twisting cold fear curls in your gut. You’re already down a fourth level spell slot, and you don’t have the components you need for some of your higher level spells. Unless…. 

Frantically, you begin digging in the pockets of your robe. You’d stuck a variety of things in there over the past month: your blood, a couple of flowers you’d thought Lup might like for when you find her, a book for Lucretia, a few lodestones…. Your hand closes around one of the stones, and you sigh in relief. You pull it out. It’s covered in magical pocket lint and looks a tad chipped. 

A crash catches your attention, and you look up just in time to see Kravitz’s golem pull itself into the valley where you’d landed, breaking off a piece of the cliff in the process. Okay, no time to find a better stone or the dust you need for the spell. 

Maybe the lint will work? 

…. Maybe. 

Hopefully. 

Cursing, you gather the spell components into one bony hand and point it at the golem. A thin greenish-blue ray begins to swirl around your finger before shooting off. In your hand, the lodestone and the lint crumble to dust, falling between your metacarpals and landing on your robes. The golem sees the spell coming and tries to dodge, but it’s too bulky and the valley’s too narrow. It bangs into another cliff, causing a miniature landslide, and then your makeshift spell hits it in the chest. 

Kravitz screams, and the golem explodes into a pile of dust and a smell like the laundry detergent you used on the Starblaster. As you look closely at the mess, you also notice thin, red and blue fibers drifting through the air. It looks like you turned part of the golem into your pocket lint.  
… That was not what that spell was supposed to do, but okay.  
You decide to skedaddle before the reaper can track you down again. You’re going to need more spell components on hand before you can feel comfortable about facing down him and his scythe. 

By the time you reach your base, the feeling of being watched has faded significantly. Your small cave has been doing double duty as a base and a research facility lately, and it shows. Quills, books, and ink bottles have begun to take over, filling the space with a small but comforting amount of clutter. From here, you’d begun searching for Lup, combing the area near the last glassing for any sign of her or the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet. 

You sigh and drift over to what’s currently passing as your desk, sinking down into your chair. The twisting feeling in your gut has all but faded. Groaning, you reach for your map and mark it with another bright white X. Another place, another day you’ve failed to find Lup. But that reaper…  
You push your chair back and wander over to your bookshelf. In the month you’ve been here you’ve managed to accumulate a small collection of magical texts and other books that had been thrown out by the neighboring villages. There’s an unfortunate amount of crappy romance novels. Still, you’d seen a reference to the Raven Queen somewhere….

You start flipping through the volumes until you find the reference you’d been looking for. It’s just a passing mention, but it labels her as a major death goddess and mentions that her followers have some strict beliefs about necromancy. 

It would follow that Kravitz is probably an enforcer for those laws, wouldn’t it? The cold you’d felt might have been her- it was an undeniably hostile force, and you were a lich who’d probably broken several of her laws, whatever they were. 

The book thumps back down onto the shelf as you drop it and wander back over to slump at your desk. The map seems to glare up at you. 

Great. Now you weren’t just trying to find a person who’d have no memory of you- if they were even alive- you were trying to outrun an angry death goddess. 

Seriously, fuck your life. 

You and Kravitz have several other unfortunate run ins before you figure out the trick of avoiding him and his goddess. The second time you meet him goes ... poorly for him. You’d been out chasing down a lead about a black-market auction (you’d thought you might be able to see if any of your relics had popped up) when you feel the now-familiar chill running across your bones. When you fail to find a hiding place in time, you just go for the highest level spell you can and knock him out for a good fifteen minutes. By the time he wakes up, you're hightailing it out of there, trying desperately to outrun the Queen’s cold gaze. 

The third time is just embarrassing. For both of you. 

And then you find the auction.

* * *

You thread your way through the crowd of prospective necromancers, warlocks, and black-market dealers. A table to your right has a set of necklaces prominently displayed on soft, black velvet cloths. The tag proclaims them to magical artifacts of unknown power. Another has what you think might be legitimate organs on display. The freezing spell keeping them from rotting has coated them in shimmering icicles, giving them strange silhouettes in the dim lighting. 

You sigh to yourself. You’d known that a black market auction dealing in necromantic artifacts would have… questionable wares. You’d not expected this strange, often grotesque, often fascinating collection, however. Nor had you expected the sheer number of people. Most of them avoid you, either pegging you as a lich or sensing the potent magic curling off of your ethereal form. 

This may not have been the best decision you’ve ever made. Trying to avoid the Raven Queen? And then coming to an auction full of illegal necromantic artifacts? Yeah, not a good idea, buddy. 

But you need to find the relics, and this auction is your best hope for like, actually finding something. Besides, you’d put too much effort into finding the thing to leave now. 

A table displaying several grimoires catches your attention, and you drift over. The seller, a masked person draped from head to toe in black, gives you a cordial nod, adjusting the giant yellow goggles that cover their eyes. You return the nod and then turn your attention to the books on display.

The magic drifting off of them feels like a twisting wrongness that settles deep in your gut. Despite yourself, you reach out and stroke the soft leather of one of the books. An eye set into the cover opens and swivels in your direction. It’s… glaring at you? Maybe? There’s a spark of intelligence in the red pupil that’s frankly disturbing the longer you look at it. 

It’s actually kinda fascinating. There must have been someone- or something- bound to it in order to create the enchantment, but you’d never heard of anything that could do this. Maybe they could have combined Deylin’s Ritual Binding and a summoned- behind the table the seller clears their throat. 

“You buying, lich?” they ask. Their raspy voice hisses out from a spot a little to your left. You jump slightly, turning to look at them and pulling your finger back from the book.

“Er. No, sorry. The eye just caught my attention.” 

A hissing, grating laugh erupts. “They do that. My little beauties.” The last word is spoken in a long, trailing hiss that sends shivers up your non-existent spine. They run their hand across the cover of the book youb ’d been inspecting. The eye slowly closes again, receding back into the cover. “What be you here for then, lich? Has the Raven Queen, may the Lords strike her dead, not found you yet?” 

“Not yet.” You hesitate for a moment. You don’t know if you should tell them you’re looking for the relics- most can’t understand you anyways when you talk about them, and referring to them as “powerful artifacts” describes like half the items here. You’d have to refer to them by what they do, and if there’s any here it’s likely your own. You shrug mentally and decide to go for it. “I’m uh… I’m actually looking for something that might help with that.” 

There’s that grating laugh again, and the seller fixes their goggled eyes on your hood. “Lich, that’s something we all would desire.” They pause for a moment. “But for your purposes I’d suggest table three.” 

“Are they-” 

“Table three, lich. Now leave a poor bookseller and their books in peace.” You decide to take the hint and abscond in a crackle of magic. 

Table three, when you finally track it down, is less a table and more a cordoned area with two tall pods. Green fluid swirls inside them, hypnotic bubbles and currents circulating through the machines. It’s about as far from the delicate bell you’d crafted as possible. 

You drift over to the machines curiously. A sign on the rope indicates that they’re to be sold in the main auction. The fluid drifts hypnotically, making you lean even closer. 

“Careful there!” a high, nasal voice interrupts your inspection, and you spin around quickly. There’s a… person, there. Orange fur brushes your cloak, and you hurriedly drift backwards, trying not to knock into the rope separating you from the glowing pods. “I wouldn’t want you to damage the merchandise!”

“Uh.”

“Unless you want to contest me, Garfield the Deals Warlock, in a test of mercantile wits!” You drift sideways again, trying to avoid the guy. 

“Uh, no?” you respond. “What are they?”

“Revivification Pods, obviously! Add some organs, a bit of blood, and poof! Brand new body!” You turn back to the pods briefly, examining them. They don’t look like something you’ve been trying to find for months now. They don’t look like they could hold the secret to getting your own body back- to getting Lup’s back if she’s dead. Not only that, but the Raven Queen hadn’t bothered you when you were still alive. If you could regrow your body, place your lich form inside of it….

You’d could search for Lup and the relics constantly without having to worry or to run from Kravitz and his scythe.

And hadn’t been that your original goal anyways? Get your body back, find Lup, and inoculate yourselves against the Voidfish?

Yeah. Whatever that ends up costing will be more than worth it.

* * *

The creeping chill steals across your bones again as you begin to lug your newly-acquired purchase back across the mountains. The bidding war had been as fierce as you’d expected it to be- most of your gold had gone into the purchase of just one of the machines. Garfield had happily made off with the other, and you really don’t want to know what he was planning to do with it.

You turn, heading for Southkrypt and the burial grounds you know to be close by. You have… maybe five minutes until Kravitz shows up again, and you’re in no place to be fighting him off.

Three minutes later, the entrance to the crypt looms beneath you, and you fly down with your purchase to land in the arched doorway. The chill has intensified, and you can feel it dripping around your bones and through your magic. Not long now. 

A quick unlocking spell later, and you’re through the doors of the crypt. You carefully shut it enough that you can keep half an eye out for the reaper, and try to ignore the thousands of dead bodies around you. If there was ever a place for necromancers this would be it: surrounded by the dead and their strange, clinging magic, where no higher power could find them. 

…. You really want to get out of here now. 

You peek through the doors again. Kravitz hasn’t shown up yet, and the chill in your bones is slowly beginning to fade as your aura blends with the magic around you. Sighing, you settle yourself in to wait until the Raven Queen’s eye turns from you altogether. 

She’s getting better. Every time she finds you, you hide or run away, dodging Kravitz and his scythe and staying in crypts until they give up. Every time you come out of hiding, she finds you a little quicker, sends Kravitz after you just a little bit sooner. With any luck, the pod will let you keep searching, hidden from her gaze by your own body. 

Hopefully. 

Warmth begins to finally return, and you can feel the tendrils of the Raven Queen’s gaze finally slip away from you. You gather up your purchase again and slip out through the doorway, taking off for the cave you’d found a few days ago. You’re going to need to ward the hell out of it, but it should serve nicely as a long term base of operations.

And, with any luck, this would be the last time you’d have to flee the Queen and her utter dork of a reaper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deleted Scenes:
> 
> [When your only weapon is a fucking stick](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647616/chapters/54129706#workskin)
> 
> [A possible third encounter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647616/chapters/54129883#workskin)


	3. In Which You Forget (Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keep a coin in your pocket.

You carefully lay the bluejeans and shirt out on the chest. The cloth is sturdy and thick under your skeletal fingers. For a moment your memory jumps back to the Starblaster- remembering the days where you would try to get the rickety washing machine to work, smell Merle’s weird “special” soap, and yell at Taako for leaving his stuff strewn around the small room. 

You miss them so much. 

Sighing, you float back over to your desk. The map’s been laid out, and the key’s been carefully placed beside it along with all your notes. Your coin’s been slipped into the jeans where you’ll easily be able to find it.

In a few minutes, you’re going to be alive again. In a few minutes you’re not going to remember your family, your wife, or maybe even who you are. You don’t know how much of your journey was fed to the voidfish, but it was enough that you couldn’t remember Taako. It’s fair to bet that most of your time at the Institute- or even further back- is going to vanish as well. 

The green light shining from the revivification pod seems to pulse, throwing ghostly highlights across the room. You turn to the machine. The shadow of your body hangs in the center of the swirling green glop. Its eerie silhouette somehow completely fails to reassure you. 

You take a deep breath, and then float up to lower yourself into the pod and back into your body. 

This is it.

* * *

You wake up. Green light plays strangely over your closed eyelids. There’s a hard and uncomfortable floor somewhere beneath you, and something cool and slimy covers your body from head to toe. 

Your eyes snap open, and you look around the unfamiliar room. There’s a small desk in the corner, and you can just barely make out the outlines of a chest in the dim light. The rest of the room seems to be solidly hewn stone. The green glow is coming from behind you. 

Groaning, you turn yourself over. Your body feels strangely heavy and difficult to move, like you have a cold or a hangover or something. The light is emanating from a weird pod half filled with a viscous, glowing, liquid. Also you’re naked, and wow, that slime is really cold. 

Laboriously, you pull yourself to your feet, staggering over to the desk and leaning heavily on the chair. There’s a map there, covered in white x marks, black circles, and red dots. The sight of it fills you with an untraceable pain- guilt and sadness and fear mixed up into a mess of feelings that don’t seem to have any source. 

The slime easily rolls off of your body as you stand there, leaving you completely exposed to the frigid cave air. You can feel the goosebumps forming the longer you stay still.  
Alright, first things first: clothes. 

You take a second look around the cave, and immediately spot a pair of pants and a shirt. Easy enough, you suppose, although you do wonder where you are- and why the fuck you woke up covered in slime. You can’t remember having anything to drink, and your head doesn’t hurt, so you probably weren’t knocked out. Maybe you were cursed? Are amnesia spells a thing? 

The clothes hang solidly around your body, warm and comfortable. They’re simple- just a pair of bluejeans and a white cotton shirt. 

… You kinda like ‘em. 

Curious, you reach into the pockets of the pants. Maybe you (or whoever left you here) left some clue in the pockets? As you reach in, the smooth surface of a metal coin touches your fingers. You pull it out. As you do, the coin vibrates slightly, and then you hear your own voice. It’s distorted and echo-y, but you recognize the cadence. 

“Your name is Barry Bluejeans,” it says. “And you’re afraid of the dark. You get ill when you drink milk or anything with milk in it. You- you had a father, Gregor, who died when you were too young to know him-” A hard, dull weight sinks deeper into your chest, that same pain from earlier returning in full force as the coin continues to speak. It introduces itself as you. And then it says- “You’ve forgotten, Barry,” and yeah, yeah you did, didn’t you? There’s a pain deep inside of your soul that feels like something- someone, maybe, if your past self is telling the truth- is missing. 

Your body is solid flesh and bone, but there’s a hole in your emotions, and you can’t remember who was supposed to be there. All you have is a map and a coin, and maybe, somewhere, a thin shred of hope. 

Your name is Sildar Hallwinter, though you have a coin that calls you Barry (and that feels right, somehow), and you can’t remember who you are.

* * *

The people of Southkrypt seem to accept you easily enough. The innkeeper offers you food and a bed in return for running odd jobs, and you take to it easily enough. Her errands run you around the town, delivering packages and messages and occasionally doing the odd favor or chore for someone else. It also leaves you with enough time to keep searching for Lup, and you slowly work your way through the surrounding countryside and any rumors about folks in red robes that you hear. 

One of the locals, a girl by the name of Lila, takes to you with a fascination that you know is born from you being new in town. Whenever she has time, she pesters you with questions about where you’re from and what you’re doing. Most of the time, you find you can’t really answer her. 

Did you have someone important to you? Yes, but you can’t remember her and she might be dead or gone or maybe both. 

Where did you come from? A world with a sky you can’t remember and a goal you can’t fully wrap your head around. 

How do you know so much about science? You don’t know. You just. Don’t know.

It’s exhausting, and every time she asks you a question you can’t answer you feel like it’s just slightly out of your grasp, hidden by a cloud of static. 

One day the local temple gets a piano. The first time you see it, your fingers begin to itch. The head cleric is searching for someone who can play it, so when he stops by the inn you immediately ask if you can try. 

He doesn’t seem eager to let a middle-aged homeless guy who calls himself Barry Bluejeans touch his precious instrument, but he can’t find anyone else. So that evening you find yourself seated in front of the instrument, untouched keys gleaming in the light of the setting sun. You take a breath. Your fingers lower, and then you start to play. 

The piece that comes tumbling out is one your fingers know well. It rises and falls in familiar crescendos and arpeggios, and when it’s over the cleric is left staring at you in awe. Still, it feels like something’s missing- there’s places where your command of the melody subsides and quiets, places where another instrument could join in to match your playing.

You almost think you can hear it- a violin that whispers through your own music without losing the time or key. 

You wonder if you ever played that piece with Lup. 

(red robes and violin music, kissing you goodnight-)

* * *

Phandalin is large, busy, and noisy. There’s no time for you to settle in before someone’s doing something, and it’s hard not to find yourself being dragged along. The one upside to the place is that you’re finally able to fill in the red dot on your map with a solid white X. No one’s ever heard of people in red robes passing through, or a gauntlet that fries entire cities. It’s another dead end and another place to begin your search in. 

So you do. You spend your days wandering the Sword Mountains, branching out from Phandalin in larger and larger circles. When you need supplies you run odd jobs for folks in town. Once, when you’re running dangerously low and no one seems to need anything else, you take a job protecting a caravan from goblin raiders. When you’re attacked in the middle of the night, you learn that you can fight, and that you can do it well enough to take out three goblins without breaking a sweat. (There’s a voice in the back of your head that corrects you in mid blow- no, Barry, shift your weight back, don’t stop moving now, watch your left side, you’re leaving it open again-)

Returning to Phandalin gets you a hero’s welcome, and several other invitations to take up jobs. You turn each of them down, saying that you have something you need to do first. They accept your reasoning with a minimal amount of grumbling, but the barkeep still insists on giving you free drinks for the night. 

It’s free hooch. You’re not turning that down, even if it means you’re probably going to get roped into other jobs later.

* * *

You’re scrambling up a craggy incline full of loose rocks and pointy handholds when it happens. You reach for the next handhold, only to grab a handful of loose gravel and rocks. The rock digs into your other hand as your body swings down and out, and you can feel a terrible wrenching sensation in your shoulder. The pain jabs into you like a knife, shooting down your side and through your shoulder. You scream, trying to hold on through the pain.

Despite your efforts, you can feel your grip slipping. There’s a rush of air as you plumet towards the hard canyon floor. The last thing you hear is a nightingale singing in the distance, and then your entire body lights up with pain.

* * *

The sunlight plays off of your robe, shrouding your eyes in deep red shadows. You sit up and look at the remains of your body- aging and worn and twisted into a position you know isn’t survivable. There’s a couple of loose rocks laying near you.  
You scream a curse at the sky. You were so close! A year, a full year spent searching for her, and not once had you seen any sign of Kravitz or his scythe. You’d been able to track down rumors and verify where she hadn't been. 

But you’d forgotten. You’d forgotten your time at the Legato Conservatory, forgotten Magnus teaching how to fight and Merle showing you what varieties of plants were inedible. You’d forgotten that you had literal degrees in engineering, chemistry, and magical theory. You’d- you’d forgotten your own name, and that hurts more than you thought it might. 

And now? Now you’re going to have another three months of waiting, another three months of hiding and running and praying that Kravitz won’t catch you this time. You’re going to be confined and trapped and so, so alone. 

Your family is gone, and you are alone. 

You have to do this without them. 

You don’t really have a choice.


	4. In Which You Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your name is Barry Bluejeans.

[GirlwithSword](https://soundcloud.com/girl_with_sword) · [i am not there (i do not sleep) - Part 4](https://soundcloud.com/girl_with_sword/i-am-not-there-i-do-not-sleep-part-4)

You wake up. Green light plays strangely over your closed eyelids. There’s a floor beneath you, you think, and something thick and slimy covers your body from head to toe. 

Your eyes snap open, and you look around the unfamiliar room. Around you stand a desk and a cot. A strange pod filled with a viscous, eerie green liquid sits behind you. Also you’re naked. That might be relevant. 

Your name is Sildar Hallwinter, and you don’t know where you are. 

The coin tells you that your name is Barry Bluejeans (seriously, what the fuck), and that you’re looking for your wife. It tells you that the recording was made by you before whatever happened that made you forget (forget what?), and that you need to trust it. 

You can’t remember your wife. You don’t know what you’re doing, but the coin seems to know what’s going on and what you need to do, and there’s a hole somewhere inside of you that makes you think it’s telling the truth.

* * *

Other people know you, for some reason. They greet you with cries of “Barry!” and “Good to see you again!” 

You can’t bear to tell them that you can’t remember them either. 

Someone hires you to protect their caravan as they pass through the Sword Mountains. You try to tell them that you’re not a fighter (you’re a scientist, you want to say, you’re a researcher and you’re going to go somewhere), but when the caravan gets attacked by a rogue goblin band you find yourself with a sword in your hand and muscle memory you didn’t know you had. 

The coin stays suspiciously silent.

* * *

Phandalin feels intimately familiar to you too. Your feet tread a well-worn groove on the floorboards through your room, and you keep finding yourself following paths you don’t know. Your feet know them, though. 

Why do your feet know this place so much better than you do? 

You comb the area around the town for any sign of the person you lost. (She wore red, the voice tells you. She wore red and played the violin and made you the person you are right now.) You don’t know if you believe the coin. It seems like you’re the same person you've always been- the one who grew up on a farm, the boy who was always interested in things his family wasn’t. You're the one who finally threw up his hands and left. (You had plans, you think. You were planning on going somewhere. Where were you planning on going? It wasn't here.)

The people around Phandalin leave you alone, for the most part. They know you as a bodyguard with a strange rep. They know you as the guy in the bluejeans who’s always asking after the same lady. 

Sometimes they ask you if you remember them. After you fake your way through a couple of conversations, you just start apologizing and saying no. After that gets tiring, you avoid them altogether. 

You’re always awkward about it, but you can never quite bring yourself to feel bad. You don’t know them. Why should you care?

* * *

There’s a map hanging up in your room. It was the same one lying on the desk in the cave when you woke up. The coin told you to take it, and so you did. It’s covered in angry white slashes. 

Some nights you swear you can feel it staring at you.

* * *

It’s been six months, and you still can’t find her. The coin tells you that it will all make sense when you find her, that she’s the first step in getting your family back and going home. Home sounds nice, you think. It feels warm when you think about it. It feels like (hot coco and cookies and homemade soup) you might have a place (the smell of plants and motor oil and pen ink, a small voice telling you that the engine needed fixing and water swishing ‘round your legs), that you might actually belong somewhere. 

For that alone, you keep following the coin’s instructions. 

But you’re tired. You’re so, so tired.

* * *

You die when the forest near Conyberry catches fire in a lightning storm. There’s barely enough of your body left for the revivification pod. The only things you leave behind are a couple scraps of blue denim. 

You hope that the owners of the Phandalin inn don’t take your map down from it’s place in your old room. 

Three months later you’re back again.

* * *

You wake up on a hard stone floor, covered in green slime. There’s a coin that tells you your name is Barry Bluejeans, and that you have amnesia. 

Your name is Sildar Hallwinter (it’s not), and you don’t remember what happened to you. 

Less than four months later later your dead body is being hauled away by a pack of undead bugbears, and you’re able to work out some of your frustrations on the monsters before having to go back into hiding. Kravitz starts showing up a lot, and you end up spending most of the next couple of months working on your maps and enchanting your chest to both clean and warm your clothes.

* * *

You wake up covered in green slime, with a feeling like you have the worst hangover of your life and a weight pressing in on your chest. There’s fresh, warm clothes laid out on a nearby chest, and you put them on before leaving the cave for the nearest village you can find.

* * *

They know you, but you don’t know them. Why don’t you know them? The coin says that you have amnesia, that you’re lost, that you had the most wonderful woman in the world, and then you forgot her. 

You don’t know if you believe it, but it’s your voice and your fears being spouted to you from that smooth, golden, surface. 

It tells you your name is Barry Bluejeans. That, at least, feels more real than the name you remember. 

Your name is Barry Bluejeans, and you have amnesia.

* * *

As you’re passing through Southkrypt one day, a woman runs over to you.  
“Barry!” she shouts. You look over at her. Long brown hair tumbles down her back, flying around her brilliantly red dress. She wore red, the coin had told you. We always wore red. “Barry!” She’s skids to a halt in front of you. “We need your help!”  
You falter for a moment. It’s not obvious how to go about telling the lady that you have to freaking clue who she is. Eventually you opt for a shaky smile and say, “Uh. I mean, if I can I guess?” 

In response, the lady tows you back over to a broken cart and a man she introduces as her husband. He shakes your hand. It’s all very awkward. Eventually, you ask, “Lila said she needed help…?” 

Her husband grimaces. “Our cart’s wheel came off, and I have no idea how to fix it.” He gestures at himself wryly. “I’m afraid I’m a priest, not a mechanic. We were about to take it down to the smithy when Lil saw you walking past.” 

You shug uncomfortably. “I mean, I can see what I can do I guess? I’m not really a mechanic either, but.” The man gestures expansively at the wagon. 

“She’s all yours. If you can do anything we’ll be seriously in your debt.”  
You spend the next hour chatting with the man, asking him about his religion and fixing the wagon. He tells you that he’s a follower of the Raven Queen, and, curious, you tell him that a couple of books on her would be payment enough for your work. By the time his wife comes back, her basket much lighter and her purse quite a bit heavier, you’ve been loaded down with what looks like half the contents of a library. 

Lila grins at you. “Did you get Garin talking about his religion?” The priest shoves his wife gently, muttering something about not being that bad. You flash her a smile above the pile, and respond:

“I think this was my fault.” 

“Oh!” she says suddenly. “Did you fix the wagon?”

“Yup.” 

She hugs you around the books. “Thank you!” 

Bemused, you watch Lila and her husband climb into the cart, heading out of town. The wheel, you notice, rolls easily down the rough dirt road. 

The faint glow of pride you get as you watch them roll away feels strangely familiar.

* * *

Three months later, you’re scouting around what’s left of Leilon. Your coin calls it the “last glassing.” For some reason, the name stirs a deep sensation of pain within you in a place you can’t quite name. The sensation isn’t quite physical- it feels like there’s a hole in your soul, maybe. 

Whatever the coin calls it, though, it’s not the most hospitable place. The Sword Mountains are infamous for their rather nasty inhabitants, and they seem to have congregated around the glassing. In the three hours since you’d arrived, you’ve had to fight off a band of goblins, several feral owlbears, and a random assortment of other monsters. 

…. Which, now that you think about it, probably explains why Garth was looking at you like you were crazy when you told him you were coming out here. 

Maybe you are crazy. Just a crazy guy, following commands he doesn’t remember leaving for himself, on a coin he shouldn’t have been able to enchant. 

Sighing to yourself, you look around the glassing. There’s nothing here; just a wide, perfectly smooth disk of black glass sitting in the middle of a mountain valley. A couple of dragonflies buzz noisily over your head. You look down at your map. While the area around you is covered (seemingly randomly) in white X marks, the glassing itself has no mark or identifier on it. Maybe you just hadn’t looked here before? It makes no sense, if this is the last place you saw Lup. Or knew Lup probably was. 

The sun beats down heavily on you from above, causing rivulets of sweat to pour down your face. Maybe this is why you hadn’t come here- it’s just too uncomfortable. Still, it’s as good as place as any to start searching. Groaning, you begin to pick your way around the circle. 

A soft thwick cuts through the air behind you. Something in your chest suddenly starts to hurt, and you raise your fingers to your white shirt. A deep red stain is slowly spreading across your chest, and your fingers come away bloody. 

Then the pain suddenly hits. It’s worse than anything you’ve felt in your life, white hot spikes stabbing through your skin and spreading until your entire body feels like it’s throbbing. You’re drowning, drowning in the pain, and you want to scream but you can’t and. It. Hurts. 

The darkness that rises up around you comes as a mercy, and there’s a blessed cessation of the pain. 

The first thing you feel as you wake is a pool of stale magic out beneath you. It feels like web of shadows spinning out beneath your feet. You look down, and find yourself greeted by your own balding face. Dark gray streaks mar your skin, reaching up and around your head and your neck. There’s a curse from behind you. 

As you whirl around, you’re greeted by the sight of a small, dark-cloaked figure. Their tattered coat flows down around their face and shoulders, obscuring them from sight. Their eyes are further hidden by the addition of giant yellow goggles. 

“Lich,” they say. “What an unexpected surprise.” 

You swear and throw up your hand. A blade of red lightning lances out, crackling with freezing cold frost. They dodge it easily, stepping back and settling into a fighting stance, their dagger held at the ready. 

You don’t even have a moment to recover from the sudden rush of getting your memories back before they’re on you, slashing and spinning like their life depends on it. You flicker out of the way, turning yourself insubstantial as you do so. They lunge right through you.

The lightning crackling around your form grows more and more intense as you dig in on your ill-used magic reserves, trying to get them to back off. The bookseller backs away, and then you’re growing taller and taller and taller, looming over them like the being of magic and might that you are. They should be scared of you. They should be backing away. They might never have known fear, but they’re going to know it starting now. 

They turn tail and run, sprinting back into the forest with a strange, easy grace. And then they’re gone, and you’re alone, floating over a wide circle of empty, black glass.

* * *

Your cave is dusty and quiet after two years of traveling. The wards you’d put up on it seem to have held, and nothing you’d left here has been touched. The revivification pod sits in the corner, its normally bright fluid dull under a coating of dust. The remains of old spell components and quill pens still litter the desk. 

Your cot lets out a puff of dust as you sink down onto it, dropping your load of belongings on the floor. A few of the Raven Queen books spill out, skidding across the floor. 

Everything is deathly still. 

What had happened there? You’d lost yourself in the rush of power that losing your physical form granted you. For just a minute it’d felt like… well, it was like the only reason you were there was for power. You’d forgotten Lup, your family, the relics, all without the help of a voidfish. All that was left was a gnawing hunger in your gut, a feeling that said- 

They should be scared, shouldn’t they? 

For years, you’d used Lup to anchor yourself. Now, without her here and without any of your family to help, you were becoming increasingly unstable. 

It certainly explains the Raven Queen’s attitude towards liches, anyways. Better to kill than have a raving, insane, creature of pure magical force on the loose. 

Kravitz comes by twice more while you’re working on generating your next body. Each time, you stay out for just a little too long and feel the by-now familiar chill invade your bones as the Queen tracks you down. The first time he comes- just a few days after you die- you almost consider letting him just take you. 

But no. You have work to do. 

So you run, hiding yourself in a nearby crypt until the sound of cawing ravens vanishes.

* * *

You wake up covered in green slime with a cold stone floor beneath your cheek and a feeling like you’ve lost something. The coin tells you that your name is Barry Bluejeans. It seems to fit you better than “Sildar Hallwinter,” at least.

* * *

The guy is pacing back and forth in front of you. “How’d you do it?” he asks. “How are you doing this? Everyone I’ve talked to says that you keep coming back! They even found your body, once!” 

You wince. The coin’s told you about your deaths, but you still can’t imagine it. In front of you, your kidnapper is still ranting. You can barely make out the ritual circle behind him- it looks like a standard set up for Evard Dark's Circle of the Lifeless, though the candles aren't something you can say you've seen before.

“You’re just a normal guy! Everyone I’ve talked to says you can’t use magic, that you’re just a fighter and bodyguard! So how do you keep coming back!?”

You shrug uncomfortably. The ropes around your hands are starting to itch, and your head is throbbing weirdly. “I uh-” 

“Oh don’t tell me you have no idea.”

“I- I actually don’t.” Wiggling your hands doesn’t really seem to do much other than making them itch more. “Listen, this isn’t what you seem to think it is-”

“This isn’t what do I think it is?” Okay, so he’s screaming in your face now. “What I think it is? I’ve been begging my patron for immortality for years, now, and then you come along?” He leans in till he’s right in your face. You can smell cloves on his breath as he whispers, “So I’m going to find out exactly what-” 

You lean back and then slam your forehead into his nose. He screams, rocking back and cupping a hand over his nose. You’re pretty sure noses aren’t supposed to bend that way. You stagger to your feet and then rush him again, pushing him over onto the floor with a wordless shout. The wannabe necromancer glares up at you, and you can see him fumbling for his focus.

You don’t wait for him to find it and instead hurry through the door to the room, stumbling out into humid night air. Lanterns are slowly flickering to life around you as people come to investigate the screaming. You stumble off to the side, sinking down to the ground as your head begins throbbing again. You’re pretty sure the guy clocked you a good one before he kidnapped you, and you are really not a big fan of that. Not a big fan at all. 

Also you seriously need to sleep for about two months and maybe get a drink. Some hooch would be nice right about now.

Beside you, the door to the house slams open and your kidnapper stumbles out, still holding his nose. The crowd of people around his door immediately start to badger him with questions. 

The last thing you see before you pass out is a couple of the town guards stepping up to confiscate the guy’s spell focus and snap a much sturdier set of chains around his wrists.

* * *

It’s so cold. The snow has managed to work itself down in between the layers of your coat, soaking them through and then freezing solid in the frigid air. Visibility had dropped to about negative two feet awhile back, and you can feel your body slowing. 

You stagger as a particularly strong gust of wind blows into you. Snow flies up and into your face, stinging your eyes and freezing your ears. Your foot catches on something, and you go down, landing with another puff of snow. You can’t feel your fingers anymore, and your toes have long-since disappeared. 

This was a terrible idea.

* * *

You can’t move anymore. Snow is slowly covering up your face, falling into your hood and chilling you down to the bone. It’s difficult to see now, and the word is slowly fading as your body shuts down from the cold. 

Darkness rises around you, and slowly, ever so slowly, the sounds of the blizzard fade from your consciousness. 

It’s. So. Cold.

* * *

You wake up to a blizzard muffled by your lack of actual nerves, and spend a good five minutes screaming into the storm. You were so close. 

You don’t leave your cave during the next three months. Better you break down here than someplace that’ll get you killed or others hurt.

* * *

You wake up covered in green slime with your voice whispering into your ear. Something hard is digging into your cheek. When you pull it out, you find a small, golden coin. 

It tells you that your name is Barry Bluejeans, and that you’ve forgotten. 

There’s an awful weight on your chest that makes you think it just might be true.

* * *

Everyone in Phandalin greets you by name now. “Barry!” they shout. “It’s good to see you again!” You don’t know them. 

Your feet lead you to an inn. The innkeeper smiles at you, says that she’s happy to rent out the room to you again, and not to worry about the cost. She just hands you the key when you stammer out something that resembles thanks and leads you upstairs. You don’t recognize the place, or the room she shows you, but it’s your scattered handwriting on the battered old desk and on the browning wall map. It’s that, if anything, that convinces you this isn’t a really weird dream. 

Three days later you pay her with your advance fee and leave town as hired muscle for a trading caravan.

* * *

You'd thought Phandalin was busy. Like, it was loud, noisy, and the largest place you’d seen in the Sword Mountains- maybe even ever. Somehow Neverwinter manages to double that. There’s thousands of people here, crowding around you, bumping your shoulder or yelling at you to move out of the way. A hundred different smells bombard your nose- you can smell cookies being baked, bread just pulled from the oven, the fresh herbs being carried by your caravan… Each new scent somehow makes the place feel more like home than you’ve ever felt in the mountains. 

The people? The people you could do without. But if you could box up the smell of Neverwinter’s main marketplace, you would.

* * *

So note to self: avoid Mnerim. Like, the dwarves are great. You have no complaints about the dwarves. It’s the undertakers that are goddamn creepy. 

Like the man yelling in your face. 

“I-I buried you! I took your body, laid it out- I was there! You all saw it, right?!” he gestures around at the couple of onlookers that have decided this is quality entertainment. “There was- there was a funeral! I dedicated you to the Raven Queen!” 

That feels… vaguely awkward for some reason. You’re too tired to deal with your shody memory right now. You shake your head. “Listen,” you start to say, but the guy apparently really, really wants to yell in your face. 

“You’re dead!” 

“Listen, I don’t know who you are, or why you think I’m dead but like- I need to sleep. Like, a lot of shit happened on the way here, and right now I’d like to sleep for a good two months.” 

The undertaker’s face puffs up like a bullfrog. You sigh, feeling the weight of your pack slowly dragging you towards the ground. He opens his mouth to start yelling again. “Look,” you say. “Just give me like- a fifteen minute power nap? Can you do that? Please? Because I’m too tired to deal with the shit right now and also my back hurts.” 

He glares at you suspiciously. “Oh yeah? And what have you been doing since you apparently up and walked out of your grave?”

You push him out of the way and start dragging yourself towards the local tavern. “Kicking goblin ass, mostly. Kicking a lot of goblin ass, sure as my name’s Barry Bluejeans.” 

He almost seems taken aback by that. “Bluejeans? Like the bodyguard?”

“It’s not my first time at the bodyguarding rodeo, no.” 

“Oh uh.” He scurries after you. The door to the tavern looms in front of you, and you push open the door with a relieved sigh. The undertaker doesn’t follow you inside, instead yelling, “I will let my Queen know about this! I know you were dead!” 

You decide you’re gonna deal with that tomorrow. After you’ve gotten a good twelve hours of sleep.

* * *

Okay. 

So just to put this out there, it was not your idea to get kidnapped by a necromantic cult. Like, yes, you know a lot about necromancy from… somewhere, and it’s an interesting field! But you weren’t asking to be kidnapped. At all. Also, no, you still haven’t come back from the dead no matter what they (or certain gossiping undertakers) say. 

You look over at said kidnappers. One of them’s started spreading what’s probably graveyard dirt in a circle on the floor. Another is frantically going through a bag. The third is sitting next to you, watching the whole mess. Her mouth is twisted down, and her eyes are icy. She’s… not pleased. 

Finally, she stands and stomps over to bag-guy, slapping him across the face. “We’ve done this how many times now, you idiot?!” she screams at him. “And you still can’t remember where you put the opals?” 

Opals? Opals. Why the hell would they be using opals? In response, her henchman starts digging through the other bags. “Ma’am, I can’t find them!” he moans. “I swear, I put them in Charlie’s bag last night, but they’re just gone! They up and walked away, I swear!” 

“Seeing as how they’re literally gemstones, I fail to see how they could have just ‘walked away,’” she says. Her voice has icicles dripping from it now. Her minion cowers under her glare. 

“Sorry…” 

She sighs, turning towards you. “We’ll just have to start the ritual.” You barely have a moment to digest those words before you’re being dragged across the circle. Graveyard-dirt guy- you assume he’s probably Charlie- takes you from her and forces you to kneel. A freezing cold line suddenly is pressed against the side of your throat, and you gulp, trying not to breathe too deeply. 

Ice-lady opens a large tome and begins chanting. The temperature drops as she does so, and a breeze stirs up from out of nowhere. The air feels thick and heavy, weighted down by death and pain. Your arms suddenly droop in their bindings- even if you’d been unbound, you wouldn’t have been able to move them.

Her chanting increases in pace and pitch, and the press of the knife becomes more and more apparent against your neck. Finally, as the ritual reaches a climax, you see black smoke gathering in the center of the circle and then… 

And then a well dressed skeleton with a giant fucking scythe steps through the smoke and into the circle. Charlie screams, pressing the knife deeper into your throat. Bag-guy lunges for his supplies again, frantically digging for a weapon. Before they can reach further, the scythe snaps out, and with two neat sweeps your kidnappers collapse onto the ground. The knife falls away from your throat, and you cautiously shuffle yourself away from Charlie. You’re pretty sure he’s dead. 

The woman’s eyes snap open, glowing with a freaky green light. “NO!” she snarls, and her voice is deeper, echo-y and almost animalistic. “YOU WILL NOT INTERFERE!”

The skeleton doesn’t look particularly concerned by this. Instead, he shakes his head almost… sadly. The scythe raises again, and you quickly lower your eyes. You don’t see the blow, but the scream echoes through the room, high and loud and terrible. 

When you look up again, the skeleton’s paging through a floating book, nodding to himself as he checks something off. Then he turns towards you. His eyes are empty sockets, lit only by faint red pinpricks of light. He nods once and then looks around the room, and you swear you can see him frown. 

“What- what in the seven hells were they trying to set up here?” 

“I mean, I think- I think it might have been an attempt at a Life Void ritual? But they were using opals for some reason instead of emeralds, and their set up was all wrong- uh.” You pause, seeing his expression. “Er, uh. Thank you, by the way?” 

The skeleton shoots you a look you can’t decipher and shrugs. “They were on my list, as it happens. How did you know what they were trying to do?”

Oh great. Another one of these questions. You shrug. “I uh. I don’t really know? But thank you, thank you kindly.” 

The skeleton frowns again, looking extremely suspicious. Then, before you can ask him how the hell a skeleton can frown, he motions at you in a clear “I’m watching you” gesture and disappears into a glowing portal. You shrug to yourself. It’s not like you’re in any place to understand the motives of weird wannabe-necromancer-killing skeletons. Though it would have been great if he could have at least untied your ropes.  
When the townsfolk find you a few minutes later, you’re sitting bound in an empty cave with the bodies of three dead necromancers scattered around you. Somehow they don’t seem surprised.

* * *

You’re wandering around the Sword Mountains near Wave Echo Cave when it happens. A band of goblins breaks through the trees, makeshift swords waving menacingly in your direction. There’s too many of them for you to take on your own- two years of acting as a hired bodyguard has pretty definitely taught you your limits there. 

The problem is, you’re on your own. 

When the dust clears and the pain fades away, you find yourself floating above your body, glaring at a band of goblins who are suddenly having a very, very bad day. One wonderfully cathartic fireball later, and you’re watching their singed backsides as they run away, screaming. 

“I’ve gotta say,” a voice says from behind you, “I am genuinely impressed” You whirl. Standing behind you, a rather satisfied look on his face, is Kravitz, servant of the Raven Queen and long time pain in your non-existent ass. 

You swear, and turn to start running, only to have a weirdly-not-bony hand snag the collar of your robe. 

“Oh no you don’t. You know what I do? I dole out punishment for those people that just like breaking the natural laws of life and death.” He gestures at Barry’s body. “I’ve gotta tell you- what is this, your fourth body?”

“Uh, sixth.”

“Sixth. Yeah. Let’s see. Barry Bluejeans, you’ve been found guilty of six counts of violating the laws of life and death while acting as a lich as well as-” you hear a rustle of pages from behind you- “Let’s see. Barry Bluejeans. . . and not only are you a lich, you’ve died 14 other times and not checked into the astral plane even once.”

“Uh. Look, I can explain-”

“Annd then you go and avoid me for eight years. That’s just rude”

“Seriously-”

“I can’t allow you to stay out here, gallivanting around, going insane, and violating the Law. So are you going to come quietly this time?”

“Listen, there’s other stuff going on here-”

“Really. Okay. Here’s the deal. You’ve been leading me on for eight fucking years now, and I really want to hear this explanation. But after that, I- we’ve gotta take you in.” 

“Er."

“Alright, look. There are rules. I can’t just break those rules- it sets a bad precedent, you know?”

“I- I don’t-”

“But I’m curious, so I’ll give you a chance to explain. Don’t try anything, will you?” You shake your head. Kravitz lets go of your hood and walks around to face you head on. 

Your first thought is- well, honestly your first thought is that that is exactly Taako’s type. Instead of a skull, the reaper’s face is fully fleshed out. He has rich dark skin and hair that’s pulled back into a messy half-bun. If it wasn’t for the scythe and the glowing red eyes he’d look like a particularly well-dressed goth. He's, well. He’s handsome.

Also he’s glaring at you, and that feels like it might be a slightly more important fact than his face. 

You clear your throat and then start trying to explain.

* * *

“Alright.”

“Yeah?”

“So let me see if I have the mess straight, yeah? You- along with seven other-”

“Six others.”

“- along with six others, traveled the multiverse for over a hundred years, died multiple times, and eventually arrived here. And now you’re trying to, what- find the relics that kicked-started a bunch of wars before someone starts using them again?”

“Sorta, yeah? Except I couldn’t actually search properly search because you or RQ- the Raven Queen, sorry- we’re always showing up, so I found a… workaround.”

“A workaround.”

“It’s less disobeying the laws of life and death and more… creative interpretation. I mean like, I’m not technically dead, right?”

* * *

“Huh. Okay.” You pause for a moment, thinking. “How do you feel about chess?”  
“I mean, I’d prefer a nice game of Baccarat, but sure, that works too.” While his words are reluctant, Kravitz’s eyes are lighting up, and you’re pretty sure you’ve hit on something here. 

“Uh, chess,” you say, with as much determined finality as you can. “I win, you… you let me have one more life, and another chance to try and stop the literal fucking apocalypse. Also you stop coming after me. Uh…” you trail off. 

He grins. It’s not a nice grin. “Tell you what, I’ll stop coming after you as long as you remain sane- like you don’t seem particularly insane to me right now?” You shrug and decide not to mention your occasional bouts of power-hungry instability. He continues. “I win, I take your soul right now and we let the Raven Queen decide your fate. Also you owe me twenty gold pieces for avoiding me for eight years and making my job hell.” 

You gulp. “Uh. Okay then. It’s a bet.” Kravitz’s smile suddenly seems particularly bloodthirsty. Crap.

* * *

“Checkmate.” You bump your King into Kravitz’s, and the reaper groans. 

“I knew this was a bad idea.” 

You glance up at him. His mouth is twisted in something you think might be disappointment, though whether it’s at himself or at losing you can’t tell. “Wait-” you say, suddenly realizing something. “Do you have like, like a gambling problem?”

He scowls down at the board. “I love risks and wagers. And then this-” he gestures out at you and the chess board he’d conjured up- “this shit happens.” He stands and snaps his fingers, banishing the board. “Well, I’d say it’s been fun, real fun, Barry, except it really hasn’t.” 

“I’ll try not to go insane, I guess.” 

“Hmm.” With that, Kravitz picks his scythe back up. For a moment, you’re scared that he’s going to back out of your wager, but he instead slashes it harmlessly through the air. A slit in reality opens, leading straight back to the Astral Plane. The reaper doesn’t pause, walking straight towards the rip. Before he leaves, he turns back to you. 

“Oh, and Barry?” he says. You look up at him, meeting his eyes straight on. “Good luck.” With that, the bane of your existence for these past eight years walks through a tear in reality and (hopefully) out of your life altogether.

* * *

You’re in your chamber when you first hear the voices approaching from the outside. 

“So how’d you end up working for the Bureau?” asks one of them. 

“It’s kinda embarrassing story,” says the other one with a laugh. Their voice lisps slightly, turning the s's into a hiss. 

“Oh come on, I already told you mine!” 

“Well, I worked for Captain Bain, right?” 

“Yeah?” 

You silently float back from the door and turn towards your desk. You had spell components there- invisibility, maybe? Before you can grab them, however, you hear a faint gasp from the door. When you turn around, two people are silhouetted against the dark cave. One, a dragonborn, has a pair of fangs that stick out of their mouth, presumably causing the lisp you’d heard. The other has a short sword drawn and a panicky look on their face. Both have silvery bracers on their right arms that reflect the lamp light inside your cave. 

“Fuck,” says the one with a short sword. “Is that-?” The other looks equally panicky now. 

“Hell if I know? The Director said that-” 

“I know what the Director said!”

“Uh,” you say, inching closer to your desk in a futile attempt to grab your bag of spell components. You really need to get a focus. 

The one with the sword thrusts it generally in your direction. “Please don’t kill us?” 

“Who- who are you?” you ask. Your fingers begin to spark slightly, preparing to cast if necessary. 

“Wait you don’t know us? But the Director-”

“We’re looking for the artifacts you created, you bastard,” snarls the dragonborn. And, okay, what the fuck? Not what you were expecting. You float backwards a little more and feel your hand close around your bag. You’re pretty sure that you’re sparking more now, if their faces are anything to go by. There’s just one more question you have to ask. 

“Who’s your Director?” 

The dragonborn snarls again, stepping in front of their partner protectively. “You’ll get to see her really soon, don’t worry about that.” 

She. 

Lucretia. 

Lucretia’s alive, and she stole your memories. The hole inside of you feels like it’s caving in further as the pieces click into place. Of course it was her- she was the one most against the plan in the first place, and if everything had gone to plan then you all would have been content, at least, untroubled by your actions. 

But it hadn’t gone to plan, had it? You’d forced Taako to kill you before the voidfish could fully wipe your mind, and you know from rumors that both Taako and Magnus at least have had to deal with tragedy of their own. So you’d suffered and now Lucretia was trying to retrieve the artifacts and enact her own plan while making you out to be the enemy. 

There’s a roiling ball of discontent and misery in your gut. It feels like you’re falling apart again, after years of dying and searching and always, always, missing your family. Missing Lup. You scream, a long wail of agony that whips around the small chamber. The two at your door immediately turn tail and flee, and you can barely spare a thought to stopping them, not when you’re falling apart at the seams again, not when holding yourself together is now literally the difference between life and death to you. 

You scream with no mouth, with no motivation other than to let out the pain of these past eight years. 

You have no mouth, and yet you scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deleted Scenes:
> 
> [Barry fixes a wagon (and fails to incur the Raven Queen's wrath, for once)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647616/chapters/54129784#workskin)
> 
> [Wait, what about Raven's Roost???](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647616/chapters/54130054#workskin)


	5. In Which You Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can't do this anymore.

You’re going over your notes from your last cycle when you find it: a notice that had been completely disregarded by your amnesiac self but that, with the full context of the relics behind it, lends you some hope again. It had been posted on Craig’s List a day before the goblin attack that had taken you out. 

“Gundren Rockseeker: Now hiring bodyguards for a quest to Wave Echo Cave.” 

The notice itself had gone into a great deal more detail about the cave, describing the “ancient dwarven vault” and “artifacts of immense power.” Your duties would include protecting the Rockseekers as they searched for their lost cave, helping them ferry supplies around Phandalin, and saving them from any who "wished to steal the inheritance."

To the Barry who had had no memory to speak of, the notice had seemed… overly eager, maybe. It hyped up the reward for finding the cave to a near ridiculous level, and the Rockseeker family were notoriously unreliable employers. To you now, however, it presented a new lead. If Lup had been trying to hide the gauntlet, wouldn’t it make sense that she would have gone for the nearest vault? 

It hadn’t been opened in nearly a decade, the notice had said. A timeline that coincided suspiciously well with Lup’s disappearance. It was the best lead you’d gotten in years. Besides, you’d gone after harder targets with less information and more tenuous leads in the past. 

You pick up the coin lying beside you and activate the recording charm. “Be sure to find Gundren Rockseeker, and stick with him no matter what. He’s your best bet for finding Lup’s relic right now,” you say.

What you don’t say is this: right now he’s your only bet.

* * *

You’re going to have to prepare for this lifetime more than any other you have. Not only do you have a fairly solid lead on where Lup’s relic might be, but you also have to contend with Lucretia and whatever she’s planning. It’s going to be a race between you two, to see who can find the relics first- you think you know what she’s planning to do with them, and you hate it, hate that this is happening at all.

Three nights after you get your next body growing, you find yourself seated at your desk, a clean roll of parchment, a ruler, and a compass in hand. You’re going to need a map of Faerun, not just of the area between Waterdeep and Neverwinter. Your old map’s also going to have to double duty as a map of the relics and their suspected locations. You begin sketching, sending thick black lines of ink across the white paper. Soon, you have a rough map of the continent sketched out, major cities, mountains, and rivers clearly marked. You put a question mark a little ways south of Phandalin to indicate Wave Echo Cave. Another question mark goes over Raven’s Roost- you doubt the abandoned city had ever held a relic, but Magnus had supposedly spent some time there. 

Over the next three months, you fall into a routine: check the progress on your body, search for any hint or rumor of the relics, and then update your maps. You spend days triangulating positions and tracking rumors. The time you don’t spend on the maps or on your body is spent talking into your coin, trying to record as much as you can for your next self.

* * *

You wake up. Your body is coated in a thin film of green slime that sloughs off of you as you stand. There are warm bluejeans on the chest in the corner and a coin speaking to you from the desk. 

Your name is Sildar Hallwinter (is Barry Bluejeans), and you have a mission given to you by yourself and a terrible weight pressing in on your chest.

* * *

There’s utter chaos in the inn. Gundren is somehow on fire, and now the bar’s on fire, and now everything is on fire and fuck you have to do something- 

So you start pulling patrons into the stockroom, ducking in and out of the heat being let off by Gundren and trying to hide them as best as you can. He’s actively shouting now, the fire coming off his body growing in intensity and brightness as he quickly loses it. 

Noelle, the Redcheek girl who’d come in earlier with a delivery of cider, is standing pressed against the wall. Her face is scorched red from the flames, and she’s closed her eyes. You step in front of her, positioning yourself between her and the heat. You can feel your leather armor start to stretch and crack as you do, and you pray that Gundren won’t go absolutely insane. You’ve never seen him this angry- or covered in flames- and it’s. Well, it’s terrifying, to put it mildly. 

“Hey,” you say to Noelle. “Hey, Noelle, right?” The girl opens her eyes and takes in your face, from the graying hair to the cracking armor, and nods. “I’m Barry. Barry Bluejeans. Let’s get you out of here, okay?” You soften your voice slightly, trying to get her to trust you. She nods again, and you carefully lead her towards the stockroom, still hiding her fully behind you. 

As you reach the stockroom door, Gundren seems to notice the lack of people in the bar and turns his head in your direction. You shove Noelle through the door and close it behind her. In front of you, the heat grows even more intense as Gundren stalks towards you. 

“Gun-Gundren,” you say. “Please stop- you, you need to stop.” 

He snarls. “Why would I want to do that?” 

“Gundren, please-” you see his fist coming, and before you can make a conscious decision as to what to do your body’s moving, your arm coming up to block the punch. As soon as you touch him, a burning heat spreads through the gauntlet and into your skin. The leather instantly freezes and cracks, turning your wrist immobile and searing your fingers. It feels like your skin’s trying to melt, but you stay there for a minute, desperately trying to figure out what to do.  
You need to get Gundren out of here before he explodes. 

So you punch him in the face. 

His helmet blocks the worst of the blow, but you still feel his nose crack, and you can definitely feel the burns spreading on your other hand as well. It hurts. You think you might be shouting, but you can’t hear yourself over the crackling of the flame. Gundren growls at you, the face he’s making more animalistic than dwarven. 

You decide that now would be a good time to run. 

As you burst out of the bar, you’re greeted with the welcome sight of Taako, Merle, and Magnus entering into town. There’s an orcish woman with them, and you want to cry in relief. 

“Oh my god,” you choke out as you stumble towards them. “You guys, you gotta help me, I’ve never seem him like this-” you gulp, and then continue talking, trying to get them to help.

The orcish woman nods and then says, “He will incinerate anybody who defies him. We gotta calm him down and try to get that glove off of him.”

Good luck, you don’t say. Gundren’s mad enough at you that he’s ready to kill you, and possibly the rest of Phandalin while he’s at it. 

As you think that, an explosion rocks the ground and you hear the door clattering as Gundren bodily launches himself out of the bar and into the street in between you all. 

He’s still on fire. 

“Why would you want to stop me?” he asks. His voice is… strange. Deeper, maybe. Out of control. “I finally have enough power to get rid of those damn orcs.” 

The actual orc in your little circle winces. Then Taako raises his wand and a bright pink jet of magic swishes out and swirls around Gundren. He bats away the spell with barely a thought and then turns to Taako. You can’t see his face, but you can see Taako’s face blanch. His mouth narrows, and he raises his wand like he’s going to try and cast again. Before he can though, Magnus shouts: 

“Gundren, you have to listen! The glove is consuming you from the inside out!” The flaming dwarf pauses for breath, and for a second you think it might have worked. Then Magnus continues, saying, “Remember your father in the cave! If you don’t remove the glove, you’re going to die!” 

The dwarf turns to Magnus. “I can control it,” he says, sounding almost put-out. 

“You can’t!” Magnus shouts back. “Look at yourself! This isn’t you!”

He laughs. “You don’t know what I’m like.”

“Listen- the rage-” But Gundren isn’t listening to him anymore. Merle is slowly walking towards his cousin, every footfall careful and deliberate. 

“We’re cousins,” he says. “We have the same bloodline-” Gundren interrupts, asking Merle about his middle name. The other dwarf pulls the information from somewhere, all the while slowly approaching his flaming cousin. 

Then he puts his hands on the gauntlet. You wince. Your hands still burn from just connecting with his skin. You can hardly imagine what touching the actual gauntlet is like. 

Sure enough, Merle’s face briefly contorts in pain, but then he’s back to making eye contact with Gundren and staring at him almost pleadingly. There’s a long moment where you hope that- maybe-

And then Gundren yanks his hand back, yelling, “This is mine!” 

“We’re the same bloodline, I can help you control it!” Merle shouts back. Gundren’s already shaking his head though, stepping back and staring around at you all with literal fire blowing from his eyes and face. 

You just want out of this situation- like, you didn’t sign up for this. You didn’t sign up for flaming dwarfs, and now (out of all times) the coin in your pocket is silent. Or maybe it’s melted. You haven't checked. 

Merle’s back to trying to talk down Gundren again. To your surprise, it seems to be working. Gundren seems to be calming down, his eyes extinguishing and the flames licking around him slowly winding down. Then he takes off the gauntlet, and all five of you heave a collective sigh of relief. 

Then Gundren staggers slightly and gasps. He reaches towards his back, frantically grasping at the arrow that’s buried itself in his side. His arms drop down, and you only have a minute to curse before he's completely engulfed in flames. 

There isn’t really even a dwarf there any more, just a pillar of flame that’s growing, ripping through buildings, and still growing. 

“Who did this?” he snarls, and Magnus stammers out something about it not being an orc. Gundren turns fiery eyes on you. 

You really want that drink.

“Wasn’t me!” you shout, trying to demonstrate that you do not, in fact, have a bow on you. Then there’s heat and pain, and your armor is dried and cracking, and it’s- 

Darkness.

* * *

The soft glow of sunset filters gently through the hood of your robe. The world is swathed in shades of orange and red, touched by the light filtering through the mountains. The ground is hard under your back, and you can almost feel the memory of pain slipping from your mind as you lay there, unmoving. A nightingale sings in the distance. 

The sounds are muted to you, as though you’re under a mile of ocean. Your other senses are likewise dulled, made pale by non-existence. Stronger to you are the currents of magic that flow under and around your feet, born by the land and her inhabitants. They outline your surroundings, familiar currents of orange fire running out in a disk, snaking around pockets of necromantic power and twining around your robes. 

You rise, hovering over the smooth plane of glass that used to be Phandalin. In the sky above you, you can see a metal sphere floating up into the air. You were- you were so close-  
Magnus, Merle, and Taako. 

They were okay. They were so close to you, and yet none of you could remember each other. It was obvious from the way they interacted- Merle’s suspicion and doubt, Taako hiding himself under the idiot mask to an extent you’d never seen before, and Magnus carrying himself like he’d lost his entire life. 

You were so close. 

And the gauntlet- that was Lup’s relic. But if they’d found that then where was Lup? She should have been there. Taako, at least, should have recognized her, and yet she wasn’t in sight. If she wasn’t with her relic then where was she? 

Your form is crackling with red lightning again, and you can feel yourself spinning out of control. The hole where your anchor should have been is weighing you down more than it ever has before, and its darkness is twining its way back through your bones. 

You’d been so close, and then you’d lost them again. They’re gone, again. 

Your tenuous control frays more and more as you shake yourself apart in anguish and fear. Ten years. Ten years, you’d been doing this, dying over and over and pushing yourself to try and find Lup, to try and fix this. But even when you were faced with all the answers you’d died and that was it. 

You couldn’t do this alone anymore. You’d tried for so long to solve everything alone, even after coming to your deal with Kravitz. You’d avoided searching for the rest of your friends because it would hurt too much to talk with them without them recognizing you. 

It hurt more to know that you hadn’t recognized them either. 

Even if Lucretia vilified you again. Even if she told them that you were dangerous, unstable, and the creator of the relics that had destroyed so many lives. You’d follow them, help them, and gain their trust. It’d take time, and patience. They might not fully remember you, but at least you wouldn’t be alone anymore.

Besides. You’d only gotten this far by relying on them. And they hadn’t let you down yet. Standing on the glass of a ruined city, surrounded by hundreds of dead and looking at a sky that’s taken the last of your friends, you grin. 

You finally have a plan. If it works, you’re going to be able to get your family back again- if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to find Lup. 

You’re not going to be alone anymore.

And maybe, just maybe, you can believe that you never really had to be. 

You hang there for a moment, a red specter floating silently over the black glass grave of a thousand people. Above you, two moons hang in the sky. For just a moment, the universe holds its breath. 

And then you fly.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes:
> 
> \- Barry never got a spell focus since he didn't grow up practicing magic. Taako and Lup tease him endlessly as a result, since he has to carry a small bag of gemstones, dust, twigs, and other odds and ends in order to cast most of spells. He never does end up getting one.
> 
> \- All the spells, locations, and dnd oddery were bastardized from the actual rules and several maps of Faerun. All the spells Barry casts in this can be cast by liches, with the exception of that first "conjure a vial" spell.
> 
> \- Do liches actually work like this? No. Do I care? Also no. Amazing how that works out.
> 
> \- If Barry's memory of Lup seems weirdly inconsistent it's because it is- there's several contradictions in canon about her name and what Taako and the others can remember/read, and I just kinda. Rolled with it.
> 
> \- There's also this interesting discrepancy between what Lucretia would have written about (and so could erase) and their everyday lives. Like, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have written or erased everyday minutia from their lives- things like laundry day and the smell of Lup and Taako's cooking. On the other hand, I like to think that muscle memory and emotional memory are unaffected by the voidfish, which means that Barry can still play the piano piece he memorized and has a strong attachment to things like the smell of baking bread even if he can't remember _why._
> 
> \- While we're talking about discrepancies, what is going on with Barry and his memory? Like, he doesn't seem to have much memory or carryover between his lives. He doesn't remember the tres horny bois even after they meet him post-voidfish? It's interesting, and something I had a lot of fun with.
> 
> \- The time Barry spends in each life actually does add up to ten years. Also by the end of this he has such a rep that when people hear he was caught in the Phandalin disaster they're just like "Oh Barry? Yeah he'll be back" and then Story and Song happens and everyone's just like. Well, that makes sense.
> 
> Also the undertaker feels EXTREMELY JUSTIFIED.
> 
> \- Originally this was supposed to be 10k words. I'm sorry, Toby. But on the other hand, thank you for cheerleading and brainstorming with me as I struggled to finish this! Also for podficcing! (Like, I know this whole challenge was for writers and podficcers. But IT'S STILL SO COOL TO HEAR).
> 
> \- There's a bunch of removed and deleted scenes that expand this fic further that I'll be posting eventually as well.
> 
> \- Also if anyone manages to guess all the references to various other things that I've stuck in this, I will be very impressed.


End file.
